The Politics of Facebook

[Maister]

I was recently 'de-friended' by an old service buddy for no apparent reason. Hadn't talked to him much at all in the several years since I friended him. Maybe he was just 'cleaning house', or maybe he got tired of the umpteenth 'my farm now has horses' message he got, but whatever the reason he is now gone. I believe with several years of intensive therapy and powerful medications I may in time learn to go on with my life after being de-friended.

I have some friends who feel compelled to post something on their wall every time they order lunch at McDonalds or scratch their butt. Others post endless game announcements (I'm guilty of this). And yet others seem obsessed with setting their 'friend' threshold low enough that anyone qualifies and their friends soon outnumber the population of Albania.

What is your threshold for accepting someone as a 'friend'? What are some reasons you've de-friended folks?

Do you think Facebook has its own special brand of politics?

[dandy_warhol]

You're on FB and you haven't sent me a friend request?


I used to be more sensitive about FB until I realized that a lot of people, especially "kids today" don't take it very seriously and friend anything and everything under the sun.

I try to keep work friends away from my FB account because if I can't bitch about work on FB then what's the point? Plus, I don't really want my boss to know that I'm goofing of on FB during work hours. *whistles innocently*

[imaplanner]

I am not on facebook. I refuse - I can barely deal with overhearing conversations about freinding and how many friends so and so has and "OMG- such and such person tried to friend me what do I do?"

Its getting more difficult though- as many businesses and musical acts, etc are foregoing typical websites for facebook.

[Hink]

I don't care if people are my friends on facebook. I rarely see or say anything productive on there anyway. It is really just a way to see pictures of people from my past and for my wife to post pictures of our kids for her friends to oohh and ahh over.

[beach_bum]

We have an unofficial policy in our dept not to be fb friends with one another, I am fb friends with some other employees though that I am more social with, but have some restrictions on what they can see.

As far as politics, I am always very hesistant to air my political greviences on fb, I have a cousin for example that posts everything from the redstate blog on his profile and all his and his wife's business...its a little too much sometimes, but its family, so what can I do.

I don't worry about who and who is not my fb friend, I use it mostly to stay in touch with close friends and family all of which live a few states away from me. I have about 300 friends, could probably drop that by a third if I wanted to, but I enjoy reading about the daily lives of people I know.

[TerraSapient]

Maister! Find me and Dandy. If your farmland horse requests annoy us we will just hide them.

I have a strict no friends from work policy on my FB account. I have made that mistake once before and the woman decided to start gossiping to the entire office about what I do on my personal time.

[Bubba]

I am not on facebook.

Oh, so you are the other person in America that's not on Facebook. Cool.

[HomerJ]

I have a facebook. I also have a strict policy to only waiste my time on facebook when I am at work, never at home I'll pretty much friend anybody, if it's someone I don't know well I just limit the contents available for them to stalk.

[TexanOkie]

I only befriend people I have met and/or know through other means (like Cyburbia), and use Facebook as a social network in the same way I use LinkedIn for a professional network - I befriend everyone and turn it into a web-based, more intensive rolodex. Even if I don't like the person or barely know them, I always try to befriend them in case I ever have any need of them or ever need to contact them about either a mutual friend or whatever other event I met them at/for. That being said, I keep most of my more professional contacts and many others on Facebook on a "limited profile" basis where they really only can see my contact information and I can't see (and vice versa) their wall posts, etc.

[otterpop]

I rarely check my FB account. There is a guy who "friended" me. I added him because he's the engineer on a subdivision I worked on and I am trying to get him to finish the improvement they bonded for. Thought maybe if we were "friends" I could get the d&#@~eb@g to get on the stick. Nope. He is just as big a d&#@~eb@g on FB as he is in real life.

He was the first person I ever "defriended."

[Rygor]

I find that being single now, FB is a good way to sort of scope out who you are dating really. Facebook friend her after a date or two, then check out her pics. If I see 1,000 pics of her where she is completely wasted half the time with 5 guys draped over her then I know to avoid any further contact. If she has the normal vacation pics, pics of family, etc., then we are good to go.

Other than that i just use it to keep in touch with friends who are several states away and plan the occasional event.

[WSU MUP Student]

When I receive a friend request, unless it's somebody I frequently talk to in real life, I usually make them wait in limbo before I accept or ignore it for anywhere from 3 months to a year. I just took a look and there are currently 42 pending friend requests and the oldest few have honestly been waiting since before I finished undergrad in 2005. When my wife opens up Facebook and I have forgotten to log out, she always comments on how many pending requests I have and how she cannot just let them sit there like that.

I do not accept friend requests from coworkers (that goes for LinkedIn as well). I will leave them hanging in limbo until the quit/retire/get fired and then I will possibly accept them.

I do not accept friend requests from my nieces, nephews, or cousins (or wives cousins) until they are at least in their sophomore year in college. And when/if I do finally accept them, they are relegated to my "Family" group where all they can do with my profile is see my name and my birthday. They cannot see my picture, my status updates, my wall, (nor can they see when I post on somebody else's wall), and they cannot contact me via private message.

I have been on there since 2004 and have managed to keep my friend count below 75 all these years. I have 0 friends on there from undergrad. The majority of people on my friends list are from grad school or the guys/girls I hung out with in high school. Occasionally I get friend requests from people I did not hang out with in high school... they remain in limbo for months before I make a decision.

I also have a strict "5 group policy" where the groups or fan pages I belong to cannot number more than 5. So often if I want to join a new group or accept an invitation, I have to delete another.

[Suburb Repairman]

My friends are mostly people I know from HS and college, and it has been a godsend considering how many of them are spread all over the country. There's also a bunch of Cyburbians.

I tend to limit my political posts to mocking the governor or the inept state legislature, mainly because they are easy targets. Haven't ever had a post turn into a flame war or anything.

I have only friended one person while I was working with them, and that was simply because we were friends before we worked together. I have gone back afterward and friended folks from former employers, but only those that I worked with a lot or developed legitimate friendships with. It has actually proven to be a useful tool to maintain networking contacts and current contact information.

[Whose Yur Planner]

I also have a strict no co-workers policy on fb. I have cyburbs ( the cross over between the different media is truely scary), friends all stages of my life and family members. I also have gamer friends-friends I just have there for farmville and cityville. As mentioned in previous post, I shy away from the political post. I also have no pix of myself on my page and blocked all pix of me. My friends and family of me or pix that I'm in are NOT to be posted period. I've also posted some of my poetry on my page.

I've defriended exgirlfriends and other friendships that petered out. I've also muted some people because of their political/religious rants.

Maister I'm also pixxed that you haven't friended me. I'm going to go pout in a corner now.

[boiker]

I have little or nothing to hide and keep my nose clean so I don't mind coworkers being Facebook friends. Of the couple hundred old high school acquaintances and college friends, I routinely keep in touch with less than 30.

Also, facebook allows me to post my clever puns, musings and daily ongoings to a broad audience who most likely groan loudly at the terribleness of the puns and jokes.

[natski]

I am facebook friends with many people at work- but i dont talk about work on FB. Planning is such a small community here, and a lot of my friends from uni are planners, stuff gets around.

When i notice someone has defriended me, i always try to work out what i had done to deserve it, more often that not, i think people decided to reduce their group of friends there and defriend people they are not terribly close to.

I should add for all those interested, we do have a Cyburbia Forums facebook group!

[Brocktoon]

I have little or nothing to hide and keep my nose clean so I don't mind coworkers being Facebook friends. Of the couple hundred old high school acquaintances and college friends, I routinely keep in touch with less than 30.

Also, facebook allows me to post my clever puns, musings and daily ongoings to a broad audience who most likely groan loudly at the terribleness of the puns and jokes.

You also post pictures of the family and your Play Station achievements.

I have Facebook friends that are co workers...in fact my former city manager is a friend. I rarely post things about work unless its positive...like Boiker its silly thoughts or how I hate it when people "like" their own posts.

[Tresmo]

What are some reasons you've de-friended folks?

I defriended a couple work people when I realized that being friends with people there was a BAD idea.

I've since pruned my list to people I think I'm likely to ever physically see again or family. I don't want grandma calling because someone's mad that I didn't accept their request. Also, I go through phases where I purge the list out of privacy concerns, even though I don't post that much to begin with. I've only once defriended someone because I had a personal issue with them.

If family members are annoying me, I delete them from my feed. I have one in particular that posts about his/her health issues in great detail, from having male and female reproductive organs, to headaches, to depression, to flu-like symptoms. I hate the sympathy baiting.

[SW MI Planner]

I appreciate facebook because I love that I can stay connected with friends and family that live so far away from me. I have a few coworkers, former coworkers, family, etc. on my page, and most everyone has access to most everything I post. I try to live life as though everything I do will be published on the front page of the paper anyway, so there isn't anything too bad in there

I haven't defriended anyone, but have considered going through the list to delete people that I never hear from or will see again. A guy I went to high school posted as his status update that he uses people's birthdays to review for deletion.

[kms]

Most of my fb friends are geographically distant family and friends, and a few local people. Kids just want to see how many friends they can accumulate, and my kids' friend will send requests. I generally accept them, them hide them because they "like" everything, and that clutters my wall.

I purge my list regularly, and have a long list of blocked people.

[JNA]

I purge my list regularly, and have a long list of blocked people.

Hopefully no Cyburbians in good standing.
Banned from Cyburbia are no friends of mine.

[illinoisplanner]

About a month or so after breaking up, my ex-girlfriend and I had a huge fight over Gmail chat. As a result, she de-friended me from Facebook, began un-tagging herself from pictures of us, and I began to notice many of her friends started de-friending me, and one even started poking me, as if to annoy me. I was like, f**k it, let's speed up this process, and so I proceeded to de-friend everyone I met because of her (pretty much all were her friends or family). I then posted some passive-agressive status about how I was done dealing with cold-hearted, insecure women, and then removed every trace of her from my Facebook (every picture, every comment/wall post, you name it). We reconciled a month after this happened, I removed the negative status, and we became friends on Facebook again. Was I out of line and did I go a little overboard? Absolutely. We both did actually. But we have both apologized and moved on. But I have not re-friended any of her friends....I really have no need to anyways. Those people would have been just another 40 people I don't talk to anymore, like most people from high school.

Regarding the rest of my friends on Facebook, I have over 500 friends, most of them people I went to high school or grade school with or people I met in college. I have been on Facebook since I started college in 2005. Most of my family is now on Facebook, and so I've friended them, but before I did, I made a concerted effort to clean up my Facebook profile. Mostly in regards to pictures from parties at college and whatnot. I still have a few pictures up, but nothing too terrible...just me having a good time with friends. Regardless, I'm not Facebook friends with anyone from work. I'd friend people from work on Linkedin no problem, but not on Facebook. I'm friends with a small handful of Cyburbians, but only ones that friended me. I haven't really gone out of my way to seek people out.

Since I have so many Facebook friends and am friends with so many people I haven't talked to in years, I don't really notice who it is that de-friends me when it happens. I notice my friend count go down, but that's about it. It still makes me wonder though and I do notice it. I figure people are just cleaning up their friend list, getting rid of people they don't talk to, or are leaving Facebook altogether. Nevertheless, it still sucks though when you see your friend count go down.

[Mastiff]

I use FB to try and friend people who show up in the Washington County Detention Center thread on a site I frequent. It's great fun! I think we've set more FB pages to private than any sports related message board.

BTW, do NOT go there if you find the site I'm talking about... they are cold, ruthless bastards who eat their young. I fit right in.

[Salmissra]

I joined FB last year simply because it was the best way to stay in contact with some friends that travel a lot, and FB seemed to be their favorite update tool. Most of my friends fall into the following categories:

high school friends (I went to 3 schools, so this covers a lot of area)
College friends
Former coworkers
Cyburbians (the more the merrier!)
Family
Volunteer activities contacts

I do play several of the games, and will accept neighbor requests to help others with the games, as well. Bring on the sheep, horses, zoning permits, goggle hints, and more!

I think everyone on FB knows my political leanings. But I don't plaster my wall with rants, and like 'burb fixer said it is too easy to make fun of our governor and politicians. I share posts about causes I believe in, funny stuff I find, and cute pictures. I share more details about work on here than I do on FB, and I've limited access to some things on FB as well.

[Mud Princess]

I joined FB last year simply because it was the best way to stay in contact with some friends that travel a lot, and FB seemed to be their favorite update tool. Most of my friends fall into the following categories:

high school friends (I went to 3 schools, so this covers a lot of area)
College friends
Former coworkers
Cyburbians (the more the merrier!)
Family
Volunteer activities contacts

My list is remarkably similar, as I also attended multiple schools, plus college and graduate school, and know people all over the country. I have to admit that I use FB quite a bit; it's been a great way to reconnect with old friends and stay in touch with current friends and family members, especially since a) I tend to get very focused on work at times and forget that the rest of the world exists and b) I'm not a big fan of talking on the phone. I also like sharing photos, funny stories, interesting articles, etc.

As a rule, I avoid 'friend'-ing colleagues, past and future clients, and other work associates. One former client kept sending me friend requests, and I finally accepted, but I have restricted his ability to view my status updates. It's not as if I'm posting anything offensive... I just don't feel comfortable having this person see my daily BS.

I was inexplicably defriended by two different people I knew from college. One day I realized I was no longer seeing their posts, and found that they were no longer in my list of friends. I have no idea what happened. Then there was the close friend of an ex-BF who started sending me these weird messages about running away together. The guy is often very sarcastic, so I thought he was just kidding around; we haven't seen each other in years. After that, he defriended me. I decided to let it go.

I have also defriended a few people. One was a friend of a friend that I really didn't know. The other was a high school classmate who has several thousand FB friends. When I was planning a business trip to the community next to his, I e-mailed him, asking for restaurant recommendations. I think I also posted on his wall. He never responded. I decided if he couldn't even bother to reply (even though he was posting regularly), there was no reason to remain FB friends.